Elon Musk's Countdown: What's At Stake For Him And SpaceX?

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 11:31 EDT - Forbes.com - Top Stories

If there was a chance to take a trip to Mars in your lifetime, would you go? Elon Musk, CEO and founder of Space Exploration Technologies (better known as SpaceX), has this dream. Listen to Musk for a few minutes and he talks of sending thousands, and eventually millions, of people to Mars. Founded in 2002, California-based SpaceX makes flight to space and building rockets a private endeavor. Watching the company develop and attempt its first missions seems similar to what it might have been like watching Howard Hughes get planes off the ground.

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When he is not building electric cars or launching historic reusable rockets or helping to create the idea for a high-speed transit system, Elon Musk likes to think about what it would be like to have people go to Mars and avoid becoming a part of a videogame played by a higher intelligence.

The most monumental part of this Friday's SpaceX launch will not be what goes up, but what comes down. In a game-changing move, SpaceX is going to try and land a used rocket atop a floating platform in the ocean.

ADELAIDE: Futurist and inventor Elon Musk unveiled ambitious plans Friday to send cargo ships to Mars in five years and use rockets to carry people between Earth's major cities in under half-an-hour. The founder of SpaceX said a planned interplanetary transport system, codenamed BFR (Big Fucking Rocket), would be downsized so it could carry out a range of tasks that would then pay for future Mars missions. "The most important thing... is that I think we have figured out how to pay for (BFR)," Musk told a packed auditorium at a global gathering of space experts in Adelaide.

Miami (AFP) - SpaceX's Dragon capsule sailed through the first flight test of its emergency astronaut escape feature Wednesday, a critical step toward launching people into space from US soil in the next two years.

SpaceX/YouTubeOn Tuesday, Elon Musk gave a keynote talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he outlined SpaceX's ambitious plan to colonize Mars. Musk made it clear that he wants to make a "ticket to Mars" within reach for many people, aiming to bring the price down to $200,000 — or the median cost of a house in the US.